UK DRI at Imperial College London

UK DRI at Imperial College London has innovation as its theme. This draws on the university’s unique strengths and focus on science, engineering, medicine and business. Led by Professor Paul Matthews, the research team will bring novel, cutting edge approaches and research tools to the study of dementia to discover new disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets. They will initially focus on the earliest pre-symptomatic stages of Alzheimer’s disease, addressing what determines the transition to neurodegeneration, but will investigate mechanisms that are likely shared across many of the dementias.

With access to large, well characterized longitudinal cohorts the team will explore causes of individual variation in dementia within populations, looking at changes that occur across the lifespan and specifically addressing metabolic factors, the relationship with microorganisms in gut (the microbiome) and the role of sleep. The team will use a range of resources including Dementias Platform UK and the MRC-NIHR National Phenome Centre.

UK DRI at Imperial College London will be located at the White City campus Hammersmith, London, in the Sir Michael Uren Biomedical Engineering Research Hub due to be completed in 2019, alongside Imperial’s translation and innovation ‘I-HUB’.

Programmes at this centre:

Professorship: Linking genetic, epidemiology and metabolic phenotyping in dementia in the context of aging, environment and lifestyle